I thought I might share this. Both of my paternal grandparents came from the spot where Cork, Kerry and Limerick meet. Traditionally -- going back to mythical times -- the area was known Sliabh Luachra (The Mount of Rushes). Finn MacCool and his band were said to have hunted there. The actual townlands were Mountcollins (Cnochuileáin or Cnoc Uí Choileáin) and Caherlevoy.

This saying helps to explain why I have (unsuccessfully) tried to learn Irish Gaelic -- to better understand the Irish people. In one lesson early on, it was explained that Irish has no system to show possession. In other…

LearnIrish.com is a new initiative that aims to make the Irish language and learning resources more accessible to learners throughout the world. By offering an affordable and well structured Irish language course it aims to give people the opportunity to learn at their own pace and in the comfort of their own home. It's currently gathering funds to make it all…

Word Nerd Alert! I am a self-professed word-aholic. Even in my young years, I read dictionaries for fun. It was no surprise then to anyone when I chose English as my major in college. It was also no great surprise that my two minors were Native American Studies and Celtic Studies. The only great curiosity was what I was going to do with all of that knowledge.

One of the research papers which I submitted in my final year covered commonly used words or phrases in day to day English…